"Why,--what do you--" I began to ask him, when Father came back into the room and I don't know to this day what the Idol meant to say, nor do I yet know what he meant by drawing himself up to his full Byrd pride height, while he looked Father straight in the eye, both of them alarmingly serious, until Father's eyes began to smile with what seemed to be warm confidence. At which the Idol let go my hand and began to talk about steel. Oh, I am so glad, glad I am here to help Roxanne to cherish such a genius as he is and that I know now for our whole lives no pride or anything cruel can come between him and me any more! I can keep him perpetually safe on the pedestal of my love and I feel that it will be my right to help feed and patch him--only now he can always buy new trousers. And for all time I have found Father! That night when I went in to commune with Mother like I do now more and more, I found him in my chair in the corner but out of her sight, and he drew me down on his knee for the first time in all my life. We sat quiet awhile and then he came into my room with me and we stood at the window and looked out over the Harpeth Valley, where Providence Road lay like a silver ribbon as it wound its way over Providence Knob. He had his arm around me, and as I have learned to do, I put my head down on his shoulder. "Phil," he said with such sadness in his voice that the new-learned tears started, "this is all we will ever have of Bess. The doctor says she has begun to drift faster now, and it will not be long. What would I have done if I had lost even what she had been to me these sad years--before I found you to help me?" Then, after the first time I had ever cried on my father's breast, he told me all about himself, and the money and how he came to make it, and how it was all wrong, but it has never been his personal dishonor that was involved. This invention of the Idol gives him more power than ever, and he is going to use it to reorganize things so that everybody will make more for their work and belong in the business. He has appointed Judge Luttrell one of the lawyers and Mr. Chadwell one of the directors--and he is going to try to stay in Byrdsville most of the time and I am to help him arrange about keeping out of the temptation of riches. "And I'll try not to develop Byrdsville anymore than I can help, Phil," he said as he wiped my eyes on his handkerchief and then his own. No, I hope Byrdsville will stay just as it is, and I hope that any one who needs friends like I did will find Byrdsville, Tennessee, on the map. Good-night and good-by, leather Louise!